British Airways - good at past and future,just not the here and now
On Saturday I visited the British Airways “Flight Of The Future” exhibition held in conjunction with the Royal College of Art at the Saatchi Gallery. BA2119 is a look forward 100 years into a future where the desire to travel is just as important to us but it is hyper efficient and more sustainable.
It’s a neat mirror image of the retrospective work that British Airways is doing as part of BA100 - looking back at the last 100 years. A rich heritage being expertly mined and brought to life via retro liveries and some smart partnerships.
The teams behind these future and past efforts deserve much praise.
But what about the PRESENT ?
Not so good.
British Airways are having another horrible summer and so are their customers / passengers.
Another IT meltdown a few weeks ago drawing attention to a creaking digital infrastructure which feels like it will fail anytime soon.
A service delivery experience which feels like roulette - how can one boarding experience at Heathrow be flawless and the next clueless - where is the consistency ?
But this weekend new depths have been plumbed. The airline faces its first pilots strike in its history with BALPA, the pilots union announcing strike days on the 9th, 10th and 27th September.
Of course the industrial action may never happen (let’s hope both parties see sense in this dispute over salary and bonus payments) but British Airways have proactively cancelled flights on these strike dates and on the shoulder days as well. Preemptive cancellations can be seen as a cynical exercise in avoiding the compensation consequences of EU261 or a helpful move to give passengers time to plan alternative travel.
Whatever your take the airline has, through sheer incompetence, grabbed more defeat from the jaws of defeat. Sending thousands of cancellation emails to customers late Friday evening on a Bank Holiday weekend was not smart.
Not having enough resource in place to respond to the frantic calls and social media messages was inexcusable and, as I write this, the airline has just announced that many customers were incorrectly told their flights were cancelled when they are not.
Of course those passengers with the wherewithal have already made their alternative arrangements while others have spent an entire day on hold.
Something is very wrong with British Airways senior management. There seems to be systemic issues within the organisation (staffing, infrastructure) which regularly manifest themselves with these flare ups (remember the data breach last year ?),
It’s as if the wrong decisions are taken at the highest level, the scenario planning based on what remedy costs least as opposed to what solution would be the one that has the optimal outcome for staff and customer.
All of this is a real shame - papering over the cracks with heritage or future innovation does not make up for disruption now.
To Fly To Serve is the airline’s ubiquitous motto. It’s a good one if those that are being served are the passengers and not the shareholders.
It’s time that International Airline Group (BA’s ultimate owners) had a hard look at Alex Cruz the CEO, I suspect the next 100 years would be more of a certainty if he moved on.
PS Go and see the exhibition - “Curio”, “Tastenation” and “AVII” stood out for me.
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The author is a brand consultant and founder of Mission Critical, a highly focused and curated weekly briefing for time poor and information hungry decision makers and THE FIRST, a monthly briefing containing 31 inspirational insights.
